Dana Do’s: Avoid Missing Your BCBA® Recertification Deadline

If you are a new BCBA or about to become one, listen up because recertification can sneak up on you fast.

Recertification can be a stressful the process if you’re not organized. Missing deadlines can mean losing your certificate completely. If you don’t recertify by your expiration date, your certification becomes inactive. That means no billing, no practicing, no supervising, and no calling yourself a BCBA.

If you finished all your CEUs on time, but forgot to actually submit the recertification application, don’t panic. You do get a 30-day grace period. You’ll pay a late fee, but at least you can reinstate your certification. But if you miss that grace period, you lose the certification and have to reapply under current requirements, which may be very different from when you first got certified. If you didn’t complete your CEUs before the deadline, there’s no grace period, no makeup assignments. You lose the certification.

It’s critical to have a system in place. For most BCBAs, recertification happens every two years. You need 32 CEUs total, which includes four in ethics and three in supervision, if you supervise trainees. The rest can be general behavior analytic learning. You can get those CEUs through conferences and webinars, workshops, online trainings.

If you collect CEUs from all over the place, tracking them can become chaotic. Two years sounds like a long time, until suddenly it’s next month.

• Keep all certificates in one dedicated folder.
• Track CEUs as you go.
• When you are done with all the requirements, submit it at least 45 days before your expiration date. Why 45 days? Well, that’s when you can officially submit the recertification application. Giving yourself that buffer leaves time for audits, missing paperwork, or just realizing you somehow fell short on CEUs, which would be so unfortunate.

Don’t gamble with recertification. Put the dates on your calendar, keep your certificates organized, and future you will be very grateful.

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